It’s as if his most natural desire to do good had over many years metastasized, crackling over the phone lines, hiding out in the backseat of his de rigueur black limousine, via messenger across the Park, his pulmonary conscience pumping darkly in his greedy heart…

Below, Lederer reads the title poem of her collection and explains that the phrase “the heaven-sent leaf” comes from the second part of “Faust,” when Mephistopheles suggests that paper money be issued as “I.O.U.s” for all the gold that is presumably still in the ground, just waiting to be discovered: